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GP writes "The GTA4 trailer isn't 48 hours old yet, but NYC politicians are up in arms because the game's setting, Liberty City, is a virtual version of the Big Apple." Obviously these guys never played GTA3, since it was also set in the "fictional" Liberty City, that also felt a lot like NYC.

They're not up in arms. Some uppity reporter went to the Mayor and the council and said, "Hey, Grand Theft Auto is set in NYC. What's your response?" And neither reponse was particularly vitriolic. Much ado about nothing.

GamePolitics.com is a site that covers video game stories that touch on politics. This is a story that was created elsewhere (like the first poster mentioned) and is exactly the sort of a story GamePolitics.com covers.

Last time I checked Game politics had plenty of people commenting without the massive influx of morons then inevitably occurs when you get a slashdot story. I'm also pretty sure that GP the guy who runs the blog didn't submit the article. Considering thats not how he usually submits them to slashdot.

He also gets nothing from extra traffic, there is no advertising on his site. It was most likely one of the readers that submitted it.

It could have been worse--they could set Halo in NYC. The game would end with Bloomberg eating a teabag on the steps of City Hall and that old gnarly drill sarge guy saying "did I give you permission to bitch?"

You just don't get it, one of the levels would *be* the line. You kill eachother to get to the front, then you slaughter the bastards that made you wait to begin with... (hey, it'd be just like the flood levels in halo 1...)

This city is a completely unrealistic setting for a story about petty crime, gang violence and ethnicity-oriented organized crime. This is an affront to the citizens, and an insult to its elected officials who work hard to keep it clean. Liberty City is a finest city you will ever find, and for Rockstar to continue smearing it is abhorrent. Why can't they pick a genuine crime-infested hell hole, like New York?

Exactly what would lead you to write a sentence where you'd seriously think it's in question whether politicians who have no understanding whatsoever of video games would have played a particular one in the first place?

I'll tell you, uhhhhhhhhh
Why they didn't, uhhhhhhhhhh, accept your, uhhhhhhhhh, story.
It's because uhhhhhhhhh, nobody wants to , uhhhhhhhhhhhh, listen to a bunch of politicians go "uhhhhhhhh" for half an hour.
If there was a story written about it, I'd like to read it.

The movies pay a royalty for using the likeness of cities in most circumstances. If there was an outrage, it would likely be over not getting their cut.This is one reason you see LA being called NYC or NYC being called Chicago in some movies. It isn't because they can't read a map, rather because Once city lets them shoot cheaper then another and the story says it is a certain city. If you come from these places, you will see stunning similarities in the skyline. Although now it is possible to add landmarks

That is absurd. The likeness of a city is not protected under any law. Do you have any proof to back up that statement?

This anecdote isn't proof, but it is relevant. Also, spoiler warning.

The commentary track on the Fight Club DVD claims that to avoid the possibility of lawsuits, all the skyscrapers shown destroyed at the end of the film are likenesses of buildings owned by News Corporation (parent of 20th Century Fox) or its subsidiaries.

This is complete nonsense. There is no royalty required to use the "likeness" of a city. NYC doesn't even charge for shooting permits; you can literally get a permit and close down streets for a shoot without paying the city a dime. City and state governments want to attract filmmakers not because they get money directly, but because it results in money being spent in local economies and it promotes tourism.Some distinctive buildings may have copyrighted designs. The Chrysler building, for instance. But cou

This is complete nonsense. There is no royalty required to use the "likeness" of a city. NYC doesn't even charge for shooting permits; you can literally get a permit and close down streets for a shoot without paying the city a dime.

Not entirely true. The permit is free, but you have to pay for police and traffic officers that are assigned to your detail. The city decides if you need police and traffic enforcement officers. Actually closing down a whole city street involves police and traffic officer involvement. That being said, you can setup cameras on a sidewalk and get a parking permit for a few vans if your doing a low budget movie not involving anything like a chase scene. Also, you only need a permit if your putting a tripod d

I live near Chicago ( Joliet ) and travel extensively through ought the USA. "Safest"? and New York do not belong in the same sentence in my opinion. To me, New York is just NASTY. I did a job just across the Brooklyn Bridge in Williamsburg at a public housing project. The guards there leave after dark for fear of being shot.

I think one of the reasons that New York politico's don't like the New York / Liberty City parallel is that it is just to close to home, and NYC really is very similar to the virtual world inside GTA.

Chicago is a much nicer, safer, cleaner and just better city than New York. Notice that game makers don't generally use it.

Chicago's a much nicer place than New York in a lot of ways, and even more forward-thinking—the greenroofs movement in private development, for example—but New York is still the safest big city [google.com] in the country according to the FBI's comprehensive crime statistics, as it has been for many years. It's safer than most suburbs too, for that matter, thanks to its population density.

You can thank former mayor juliani (however it is spelled)for that.I remember going into NYC back in the early 90's and it was scary. You could see a difference after he became mayor and this difference was more rvident the more the news stations complained about him. I guess he created a floating precinct idea were an entire police station was mobile and could be located where ever the need for extra enforcement popped up in less then 24 hours.

You could see a difference after he became mayor and this difference was more rvident the more the news stations complained about him. I guess he created a floating precinct idea were an entire police station was mobile and could be located where ever the need for extra enforcement popped up in less then 24 hours.

His greatest success was reducing the bureaucracy and letting the departments solve problems at the lowest possible level. This is the opposite of rigid bureaucratic systems like the French Nation

Wait a minute. A chief of the executive branch enforcing the laws that the legislature has passed, instead of spending all his time trying to get them to pass the laws he wants? That sounds pretty crazy to me.

Crime was dropping before Giuliani took office. And it's dropped faster under Bloomberg than it did under Giuliani.

Crime dropped *nationwide* while Giuliani was in office, largely as a result of Bill Clinton's initiatives in both crime prevention (through educational programs, etc.) and in enforcement (100,000 new officers nationwide for community policing, of which about 5,000 ended up in NYC - that's 5,000 cops walking the beat that the city never had before, and Giuliani had nothing to do with them).

I guess he created a floating precinct idea were an entire police station was mobile and could be located where ever the need for extra enforcement popped up in less then 24 hours.

There's no such thing as a "floating precinct". William Bratton and his lieutenants came up with most of the ideas that lowered crime, but the two biggest things that you can credit from an enforcement standpoint are just those 5,000 extra cops and the computerized COMPSTAT crime tracking system that was both devised and implemented by deputy commissioner Jack Maple.

Since 9/11, Giuliani gets credit for way too many things that he had little or nothing to do with. Most New Yorkers did not like him in the waning days of his mayoralty, and most credited Bratton and Clinton more with the reduction in crime than Giuliani. (I'm not sure if you can still find old gallup polls anywhere, but the polls did reflect that.)

And how did Giuliani repay Bratton for his hard work? By asking for his resignation and hiring Bernard Kerik, a personal friend with ties to the mafia, to replace him.

You're going to be hearing about this a lot more if Giuliani presses ahead with his presidential campaign.

New York is in fact the safest large city in the US according to statistics. Chicago has a murder rate about twice that of NYC.
Of course, if one were to compare on an international level, they're both dangerous compared to the rest of the "developed" world.

BTW, the New York you describe is very hard to reconcile with the New York I know. Just across the Brooklyn Bridge is nowhere near Williamsburg. Perhaps you meant the Williamsburg bridge? Or were you working in Brooklyn Heights? I can't think of any public housing projects near either.

Chicago is a much nicer, safer, cleaner and just better city than New York. Notice that game makers don't generally use it.

That's because Chicago has something New York has long forgotten: Class. In Chicago, crime isn't spilling onto the streets. It's locked away in the Government itself.

If you wanted to set a crime game in Chicago, it'd have to be about stealing election votes, selling illegal drivers licenses, and collecting kick backs from major Government projects. The final mission would be to break into Meigs Field at 2AM and illegally destroy the runways (using tax-payer funded crews, no less).

In some places, it's called the mafia. In Chicago, it's called the Government.

Umm, no. Chicago has something called racial divide. It appears to suburban residents like the OP that Chicago is safe because they only stray into very small nearly exclusively white enclaves like Lincoln Park or the Gold Coast. They never go to the south side, which has 75 square miles of land entirely filled with Negroes. The reality, which is masked by the difficulty in finding race based crime stats, is that the vast majority of crimes in Chicago involve Negroes as both criminal and victim. It is

No, not really. There are many Hispanic neighborhoods that have similar income demographics but are generally safer.The materialistic view of crime worked well in the 1960s when the US was 90% white and 5% black with everyone else mixed in.

Today, it's a different story. The story of the criminality of the American Negro is unique and irrespective of wealth. There are many hispanic neighborhoods which are significantly more safe, despite having similar income demographics. The same is true for many asian

It is not so much as a racial divide but more an " undesirable " divide.When I was in New York, I noticed parks filled with weirdos just lurking about. I think it was Washington Park , but I am probably wrong. That would never happen in Chicago, the cops would roust out the lurkers and weirdos and send them off.

You can go to the Lake front any time of the day or night, or Lincoln Park and the New York style creepy lurkers just are not present. They aren't welcome in Millennium Park or Grant Park, or along

Erm, Williamsburg isn't near the Brooklyn Bridge. As I write this, from my apartment about ten blocks from the middle of Williamsburg, in a lovely, safe, neighborhood, I am somewhat confused as to what you're talking about. Plus, I'm sure Chicago's housing projects are just delightful. Where was that Cabrini-Green place again?

.... if you go to some of the danker pits of Tokyo at 2am, there is the very real danger that your shoes will get vomited upon by some drunk salariman staggering out of a bar because he can't even sit vertically anymore. The smell (booze plus smoke plus BO plus vomit) could also count as an assault on the senses. If you're a cute female, you might even get groped on the subway in the morning.

Safest is of course relative. In the county I was born in the only murder that happened there in years was some guy who happened to be driving through when he decided to kill his wife. That was 5 years ago.I doubt the "safest" city in the USA can say the same thing.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and bet that there were a lot less people and a lot less population *density* in your county than nyc. Wait, you mean*number* of murders goes up with number of people? You don't say...
Now how about some stats there are 6.6 murder/100,000ppl in a city of 8mil with a metro area of 22mil, do you really think that's a large number? I'm betting that it's less per capita than th one murder in your county

its not that bad in ny:) been here my whole life. NYC is pretty safe overall. There are a few trouble spots but even they're not as bad as it seems. Yes there are housing projects, but dont forget people do live there, and not all of them are criminals. It just happens that there are criminals in those areas because they live in a poorer community, inside the big rich apple. You have extreme wealth and extreme poor, all at a subways distance.

I'm suspicious of your post. When were you working in NYC? I ask because, well, first, anyone who's afraid of going into Williamsburg these days must fear trendy college kids. Second, because I'm wondering when they moved Williamsburg to be near the Brooklyn Bridge-- last I checked, Williamsburg was near the Williamsburg Bridge.

On the same token, I don't really think Rockstar's as-of-yet TRIED to go very far in capturing the feel of the real-life cities they base their settings in.
I think their foremost concern is making the cities the most fun for driving really fast, and blowing up lots of stuff.
If they strive for more realism though - just imaging the thrilling white knuckle car chases through downtown Manhattan during rush hour! Er... wait...

It isn't what you think it is like, It is what I tell you to think it is like.

I think the perspective is off by default. If rockstar really did do this, they might have issues with the game being accurate enough to plan a crime and some grieving family trying to blame the guy with the most bucks.

Agreed here. As one who grew up in Nu Yawk, I'm hard pressed to think of a single feature in that game's Liberty City that was reminiscent of the city in any way. It was very much a generic Hill Street Blues [wikipedia.org] -like "generic big Eastern/Northeastern US city."

Seriously, Rockstar hasn't really done a good job capturing the feel of the cities they parallel. Vice City didn't feel like Miami either.

Agreed here. As one who grew up in Nu Yawk, I'm hard pressed to think of a single feature in that game's Liberty City that was reminiscent of the city in any way. It was very much a generic Hill Street Blues -like "generic big Eastern/Northeastern US city."

As a New Yorker I got the feeling it was sort of a rundown rust belt kind of city, maybe Detroit.

Disagree here. Vice City, according to my friend who went to college at the University of Miami, was filled with things reminiscent of Miami.

A journalist asks a politician about the inclusion of their voting jurisdiction in the latest instalment of one of the most controversial media franchises, and the politician say they are opposed to it out of fear of offending voters. This is what passes for news? GTA getting bad press is like politicians ducking bad press whenever they can, it is inevitable.

And what is so "unfortunate" about Take Two not wanting to comment? What are they going to say that we can not figure out on our own?

GTA 3, VC, and SA used the same engine, and are thus from the same generation, kind of like episodic content, while still being full length games. GTA 4 has a new game engine so it's a different generation. Though this distinction wasn't really maintained in GTA 1 and 2, as they used the same engine, as well as there being another game London 1969 between them.

Grand theft auto 1 and 2 were 2-d top down view games released on the playstation and PC (and dreamcast in the case of GTA2). GTA3 refers to the 3d game released on playstation 2. Vice City, San Andreas, and all the PSP games the other games that came after GTA3, while they may be sequels, did not recieve a number designation.

I suppose the major difference that gets GTA:IV its own number designation is the vastly improved graphics engine over all the GTA3 games.

Well, it's somewhat obvious that the news poster hasn't played GTA3 either, because if he had he'd have known it wasn't based in Liberty City.

It's kind of a rather massive thing to overlook that CJ left Liberty City to move to San Andreas for his mother's funeral. The first GTA was the one that was based in Liberty City (notwithstanding the "Liberty City Stories" mini that came out after GTAIII).

"The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers."

Now I haven't played all the GTA games, but I've played a fair number of them, and I can't recall a mission that required me to kill a cop to pass. Am I remembering wrong? There was the one in San Andreas where I waste a bunch of National Guard I suppose, so perhaps that's semantics, but it wasn't cops. Anyone know of a cop-killing mission?

Blah, blah, blah! Grandstand, "Grand Theft Auto," grandstand! Claim of Outrage! [insert politician not disagreeing here] [insert politician not disagreeing here]. ----Instant News!There, fixed that fer ya.BTW, the politicians probably feel -and I would agree- that the game will be good for the city by generating tourism.

You know what other fictional city bears more than a striking resemblance to New York? Gotham City. Hopefully the New York Daily News reporters can demonstrate due diligance in getting Bloomberg to deny the existence of caped crusaders dressed as bats roaming the city at night, on the record of course.

I might have agreed with you had the same thing happened before GTA3, but, really, they don't need to do anything (apart from releasing the trailer) to get this kind of press. So-called gaming "journalists" are more than happy to run around looking for quotes such as these once they have anything (such as the trailer) on which to base their questions. Between now and the time GTA4 comes out, there will probably be a story like this at least every other week and Rockstar won't have to do anything but conti